80 Year Old Woman Stops Mountain Lion with Gun
She may be 80 years old, but Martha Smith of rural Fairburn is still a good shot.
She has lived her entire life on the family ranch in the Black Hills and last week encountered her first mountain lion. Smith says she heard her dog bark, looked outside and saw the big cat in the garden.
She was afraid for the dog's safety so she grabbed her .22-caliber rifle, went outside, took a shot but missed so she called 911.
Smith says she grabbed the gun again, went back out and found the cat, "a spittin' and a growlin’”, so she waited to spot the light-colored hair where his heart was, took another shot and dropped it.
Game officers picked up the 90-pound carcass. Smith would like to get it mounted but doubts that she'll get it back.
Labels: DefensiveGunUse
posted by John Lott at 9:43 PM
3 Comments:
Interesting stuff, this.
I belong to a Search and Rescue unit in a state where there are mountain lions, and we recently held a mock search (for training purposes). Just before our team was deployed, we heard on the radio from a person who was already deployed, that she was being stalked by a mountain lion. Soon after, she reported that she was being stalked by two of them, one of which came within 30 yards of her. She was pretty experienced in the ways of the out of doors, but to say that her voice was filled with fear and that we were chilled would be an understatement.
We got her back without incident. I myself have a CCW and was armed with a puny .380 PPK. But from now on, I'm going to carry a much more capable gun -- as in a .357 Magnum.
Dear Anonymous:
Thanks very much for the post. I think that the woman in the post was pretty brave to go after the Mountain Lion with a 22.
Sickening, utterly disgraceful, to shoot a wild animal like that chills me to the bone, You live on it's land and you shoot them on sight. I'm ashamed to be the same species as these people.
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